So that people trust each other
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František Hamr was born on 21 July 1937 in Řípec, South Bohemia. His parents managed the family farm, had cows, horses and 20 hectares of fields. As a respected farmer, his father, František Hamr Sr., was the mayor of Řípec, and during the war, they managed to prevent the destruction of the First Republic’s linden trees. After the war, the family turned their full attention to farming, using loans to buy machinery and even buying a tractor together with other farmers. After 1948, however, the pressure to join a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) began. Compulsory levies were increasing, and practically everything the family produced gradually got taken away. In 1952, the witness apprenticed as a concreter and spent part of his classes working at Prefa in Litice nad Orlicí, where he earned good money. He was thus able to help the family stretch the demands of levies. However, the pressure from the JZD escalated, and the farmers were threatened with imprisonment in Jáchymov. So the Řípec farmers capitulated and joined the JZD. The Hamr family lost their farming land and mechanisation, but they had to continue paying the loan repayments. František Hamr, as the son of a kulak, did not get admitted to the master’s course, but later graduated from an industrial school. He worked at the South Bohemian Building Materials and later at Rašelina Soběslav until his retirement. His great passion was philately; he is a widower and has two daughters. In 2025, he lived in Soběslav.
